


Something Pure and True

by myfavoritedemons



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Flogging, M/M, Masochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:26:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21855223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myfavoritedemons/pseuds/myfavoritedemons
Summary: Thomas Hartnell learns more about himself than he expects when he's punished for taking Lady Silence.
Relationships: Thomas Hartnell/Francis Crozier
Comments: 9
Kudos: 48





	Something Pure and True

“Will it hurt?” Manson asks, and Tom Hartnell has to choke back a shaky laugh. The three condemned men are waiting in the hall with an escort of marines as the crew assembles. He’s never been flogged before, but he’s seen enough shipboard punishment meted out to know what’s coming. 

“Yes, Manson,” he replies. “Very much. That’s the point.”  _ To teach us a lesson, like the unruly children we are _ , he thinks, and it conjures images of his father bending John over his knee as a child to instill discipline in him. Tom should never have listened to Mister Hickey. The man’s got all sorts of queer ideas about the order of things. Tom should have known his half-cocked plan for anticipating the Captain’s needs would only lead to trouble. 

Manson is fetched first, which means that Tom is left alone with Mister Hickey, who keeps trying to catch his eye. It’s an unwelcome distraction when Tom is doing his very best to stay calm. He steadfastly refuses to meet Hickey’s gaze. He stares down at this own hand where it grips a doorframe, worrying at a tiny sliver of wood that started as a splinter and keeps getting bigger the more he pulls at it. He’s not in any mood for more of Hickey’s attempts at conversation. 

Tom had known, the very instant they were summoned into the captain’s office, that they’d done wrong in bringing back the Lady. The piercing look in Captain Crozier’s eyes, at odds with his calm demeanor, had been all Tom had needed in order to know, but Hickey had gone on rambling, like a fool. The familiar tone he took with the officers only increased Tom’s sense of despair. Couldn’t he see that he should be begging for mercy, not arguing? Not digging himself deeper?

‘Most men only need to be flogged once if they’ve any sense,’ Harry Peglar had once told him when he caught Tom staring at the stripes on his back. Pale pink lines crossed his bare shoulders in an angry raised V of dead skin. The image of it had haunted Tom and it comes back to him now and makes his stomach twist.

The beating of the marine’s drum echoes through the main deck. Tom hears murmured voices, and then a sharp crack of Mister Johnson’s cat followed by Manson screaming. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hickey startle at the noise, and then go unnaturally still. It’s a horrible sound, but worse is the way that with subsequent cracks, it softens from screams into quiet sobs. 

“I won’t..,” Hickey starts.

“You will,” Tom sighs. He finally turns to look at Mister Hickey. The man is white with fear, and sweat has begun to bead on his brow. It’s the first time this whole voyage that Tom has seen something besides a smug little smile on Hickey’s face. “With thirty lashes? Anyone would scream.” Hickey shakes his head mutely, but he turns away and stops pestering Tom. 

When the men come to retrieve Tom, it’s almost a relief. Despite his nerves just moments ago, he feels past his fear now. He cannot fight what’s coming, and the surrender of control feels like something akin to peace. All he needs to do, all he can do, is take what the captain gives him. Tom walks to meet the assembled crowd with his eyes on the floor. He sheds his shirt without a word; he puts up no resistance when one of the mates lifts his arms and ties his wrists to the beams of the ceiling. It’s slightly too high for him to stand comfortably, his arms spread apart so that his shoulders strain and the heels of his feet lift off the ground. Captain Crozier begins a recitation of the charges, each and every one of them true, each and every one of them fully deserved. 

He’s done everything they accuse him of. He’s done wrong by his crewmates, by his captain, by the Lady herself. He’d wished her nothing but good fortune when she’d left them the first time. To lose kin out here in this waste, to find oneself alone...He understands what she must have been feeling only too well. Even now he finds himself listening for John’s laugh when he tells a joke, and it feels like a knife in the ribs every time he realizes he’s let himself forget his grief for a moment. When Hickey had convinced him to come to take Lady Silence into custody, he should have fought harder to see her treated well. He should have made so many different choices...He’s so lost in thoughts of his shame that he’s taken by surprise when Mister Johnson begins. 

The cat o’ nine cracks across Tom’s back and the pain comes sharp and fast as lightning, chasing all the shame out of his head. He gasps as the initial sharpness is replaced almost immediately with a heat that radiates out from the spread of the braids. Then, before he can recover, it cracks again. This time he screams. One of the braids has hit him lower, where the flesh is softer and more sensitive, and he twists back and forth in his restraints, trying to pull away. He’s sorry, can’t they see how sorry he is? The third strike splits the skin. His back is warm where the cat has struck, and hot where blood starts to trickle down from the open wound. It is so different from any childhood punishments, and yet one thing is similar. Tom knows, deep in his bones, that he’s brought this upon himself. 

‘Dereliction of duty,’ Captain Crozier had called it, and he was right. Between the fourth and fifth blows, he breathes deep and tries to steady himself again. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself in front of everyone. If he can find that calm he felt before, he can take the punishment he’s due with some dignity. Tom grits his teeth, but still, he cannot make himself quiet as more of the strikes tear into flesh and more of the wounds bleed. 

Six strikes and his eyes turn upward, seeking Captain Crozier’s eyes, but the man will not meet his gaze. He seems lost in his own thoughts, somewhere far away. The seventh strike draws more blood, and Tom stops trying to master himself. Eight strikes. He screams. Now Captain Crozier turns his eyes to watch. There is no mercy to be found anywhere within them. Nine. Again Tom screams. There’s nothing but the pain in his back, and it’s a blessing. He didn’t know before, but there’s no room in him now for selfishness, or fear, or weakness. Ten strikes. Tom can still hear himself crying out, but it’s only a reflex. He feels like his soul is trying to float free of his body, and the only thing anchoring him to his flesh is the renewed pain of each lash.

The eleventh strike hits him on an open wound and his vision swims. Then comes the twelfth, and suddenly it’s done. As someone cuts him down, he feels almost boneless. All he wants to do is collapse, but some distant part of him is aware that Captain Crozier may still be watching. He holds himself together long enough to walk to Doctor MacDonald’s surgery. Manson is already there, being tended to Peddie.

“Are you all right, Tom?” Manson asks. Tom blinks slowly and tries to gather his thoughts. He feels...like he’s floating. The fear and the pain have been hollowed out of him and replaced with a calm warmth. He nods. It’s over. He bore his punishment and now he’ll be forgiven. The doctor is saying something to him, guiding him to sit himself down, and Tom sleepily follows his lead.

“This will hurt,” Doctor MacDonald is saying, and Tom simply nods. Doesn’t the doctor know he can handle pain? Didn’t he see? The knife-sharp sting of the saltwater is only more of the same. It brings him out of his stupor, though. It reminds him that his soul is still housed within his poor, battered body. As the rag accidentally scrapes an open wound he can’t help but make a keening noise. 

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says. “Just hold still. You’re doing very well, lad.” At this unlooked-for praise, Tom is shocked to feel his prick twitch. He flushes with surprise as the cloth is swabbed gently against his back. He leans further forward, but Doctor MacDonald doesn’t seem to be aware that anything is amiss, and soon enough he’s moved on in order to tend to his newest arrival, Mister Hickey. Tom wasn’t even aware of the other man’s punishment taking place, but here he is, stripped nearly naked, trembling, and clearly in pain far more pain than Tom endured. If he had his wits about him, Tom would surely feel pity for the man, but instead, there’s a greasy, jealous feeling in his gut. If Tom had borne a flogging like that, the captain would know he was really and truly repentant.

Climbing into his hammock when the doctor releases him is a more precarious ordeal than usual, but nearly as soon as he’s settled Tom finds himself drifting. A childhood memory swims up from the depths of his mind and turns quickly from memory to dream. Tom is watching John wail at being put over their father’s knee for some childhood prank. 

“It’s your turn, Thomas,” his father says, his face dour. Tom begins to cry, but before he can run he’s pitched forward and instead of his father’s lap he finds himself falling from the railing of Terror into the cold water below. He takes hold of something solid beneath him and finds the mess table floating on the waves. Soaked to his skin, Tom shivers. He looks down to find he’s got nothing on. Why didn’t he think to dress before he went up on deck? 

“Are you ready?” the stern voice behind him asks. For a moment Tom thinks it’s his father again, but the features blur and now Captain Crozier regards him with a cold stare. Tom grips the edge of the table he’s still clinging to. 

“Yes, sir,” he says.

“You won’t cry?” the captain asks. “Everyone is watching.” Tom looks up to see the whole crew assembled for his punishment. Oh god, everyone knows what a horrible mistake he’s made. Everyone can see how flawed he is. He must show them how contrite he can be, given a second chance.

“No, sir,” he replies.

“Good. I know you’ll do me proud this time, son,” Captain Crozier says. Tom nods. He wants to be forgiven more than anything. He wants to be good. The cat strikes him again and again, the sensation now familiar to him, the shock of the new replaced by the comforting sense that he is being purged of his sins. This time he is strong. No sound escapes his lips. He’ll be forgiven, he’ll be loved, he can be a good boy for the captain, he can- Without warning the strikes stop, and there’s a hand on his back, gently tracing the sensitive lines left by the cat. Tom leans into the touch.

“Are you sorry?” Captain Crozier asks. Tom nods. He turns his head to see the faces of his crewmates. There’s pride in the way they regard him now. “Stand up and face me, Thomas.”

Tom straightens, ignoring the soreness that is seeping into his bones. The captain is looking down at him. He seems impossibly tall. Captain Crozier takes Tom’s chin in his hand and holds him tight.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” Tom whispers, and at this Crozier smiles. Tom feels his prick hard against his belly.

“Please, Captain,” he gasps. The captain’s kiss, when it comes, is as gentle as the cat was rough. Tom sways in his steady grasp, the deck below him tilting in a way it hasn’t in over a year since they were frozen in. 

“Hartnell!” Someone shouts, and a hand on his shoulder pulls him away from Captain Crozier and shoves him back down into his hammock, where he lays face down with his prick trapped and aching between his abdomen and his breeches.

“You were having a nightmare,” the voice of Thomas Jopson says, and then more softly, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you Mister Jopson,” Tom replies, cheeks burning. He lays there frozen with a stomach-churning mixture of shame and arousal hot in his gut. What is wrong with him? “I’m fine. Thank you.” He waits until Jopson’s footsteps fade before shifting enough to reach into his breeches and take hold of his leaking cock. As quietly as possible, he attempts to finish himself off. Every shift of his hips sends fire racing across his back as fresh wounds twist and strain. The pain is strange and sweet. Tom closes his eyes and tries to remember the way it had felt to be held immobile in his bonds while everyone had stared. He imagines a different ending to the flogging, where when he’s cut down it’s Captain Crozier himself who takes Tom back to his own cabin. A moan builds in the back of Tom’s throat as he imagines being laid in the captain’s bed, being tended to and praised for taking his punishment so well. Perhaps as a reward, Captain Crozier would take Tom’s prick in his own hand and-

Tom comes with a whimper he cannot stifle. When he’s called to serve his next watch, he will do his best to put the dream from his mind. With any luck, there’s a chance it will simply fade with the encroaching day. Thomas Hartnell has never been a lucky man. 


End file.
